Archive for
July, 2010

I won’t write much here as we decided this was important enough to deserve a home page mention 🙂

Suffice to say, the announcement from Julia Gillard over the weekend could be good news for anyone looking to trade-in their old banger for a new fuel-efficient vehicle. Please read the details on our Cash for Clunkers intro page and look forward to more comment and analysis on the rebate on this blog .

Who loves the legends? Rover, Lamborghini, Jaguar and Aston Martin are all legends that have experienced a change of hands in recent times. But who belongs with whom these days? The more recent economic climate has forced a number of new automotive amalgamations and buy-outs due to rising costs that have become too great for a number of iconic car manufacturers to manage solo.

Established prestige British marques like Rover and Jaguar are now Indian or Chinese owned. Almost all car manufacturers have needed to look elsewhere for building the cars that they create. So setting up a manufacturing plant in another land where the costs of production are lower makes a lot of sense. The likes of China, Brazil, India, Holland, Spain, Hungary and Argentina are a few of the locations around the world that have witnessed well known brands from Europe and beyond setting up low cost car manufacturing plants at these new locations.

Many car manufacturers have, in fact, been bought over by their competitors because of the scary economic losses they’ve experienced in diminishing returns recently. Saab just about disappeared completely, but was saved by a few Saab enthusiasts – and Spyker in Netherlands, which now owns Saab. Lamborghini is now owned by Volkswagen. Rolls Royce is owned by BMW. And Jaguar, which was owned by Ford, is now owned by the Tata group in India. MG is Chinese owned, while the other once British owned Mini is now completely BMW’s work. Land Rover has also been taken over and owned by Tata of India. Volvo is owned by Geely in China.

Joint ventures or amalgamations has seen Aston Martin amalgamate with Toyota, Renault marry Nissan, Fiat joint venture with Chrysler, Suzuki – incredibly – unite with Volkswagen and… wait for it… BMW join with Brilliance in China. You are probably aware that Ford and Mazda have had something going for quite some time, but you may not have known that Peugeot and Citroen of France have amalgamated with Mitsubishi of Japan.

I think it is pretty obvious that the motor industry will continue to grow with plenty of vigour via a large level of Chinese and Indian investment. These two countries have a huge domestic market.

China is no bunny when it comes to copying a template and, without a doubt, if Chinese engineers are able to create a Chinese BMW, Lexus or Mercedes Benz equivalent for a fraction of the price, then the real BMW, Lexus or Mercedes Benz manufacturers have their work cut out. I guess this kind of competition has got to be good for the consumer. A new Audi or Mercedes Benz might be a great deal cheaper to buy in the future.

This winter, you might be taking a road trip to a ski resort or somewhere similar. Now, driving along mountain roads are really quite fun from the motorist’s point of view. You get to put all the special features (or most of them, anyway) through their paces – winding roads give you the chance to really appreciate the car’s handling and steering around corners, while uphill and downhill stretches allow you to play with the gears to make sure that you keep the motor purring over at just the right rev level to run efficiently and at peak power. However, winding roads aren’t quite such fun for the passengers, especially those under a certain age occupying the back seats.

Bored kids on a long road trip are probably a safety hazard. They say that cellphones and GPS navigation systems can be a distraction to the driver and lead to near-misses or worse. However, you can turn off radios, ignore phones and turn off the GPS navigation – and some modern cars can do this for you automatically if they detect by your driving style that you are facing a demanding situation. However, kids don’t have an off switch, and bored kids tend to come up with the following, all of which are likely to drive you half nuts. (Add your own pet hates if I haven’t listed it here. They are listed from most stressful to least stressful.)

“I’m going to be sick!” (usually said just after passing a “No stopping for the next 1 km” sign)

Many of the standard devices used to prevent this potential cause of accidents won’t work on winding roads, as books, hand-held computer games and the new seat-back DVDs can really only be used on straight roads; on winding roads, they cause nausea (see Irritating Speech #1). And if the road is out the back of nowhere, old favourites like Licence Plate Cricket/Bingo and Yellow Car can’t really be played. Squash Each Other Going Round Corners loses its novelty fairly quickly, especially for the person in the middle rear seat. However, the following can occupy small (and not-so-small) minds on long, winding roads as well as at other times:

CDs. Think beyond music, as there’s only so many times through that you can really listen intently to a music track before the mind starts to wander, and there’s only so many times that drivers or those over the age of ten can tolerate The Wiggles or The Fairies. Talking books tend to appeal to a wider age range, especially audio versions of classic books.

Family history. Every family has a collection of stories like When Uncle Jim Sold His Hair, The Go-Kart I Built When I Was Your Age, How Grandma Lived During The Depression etc. Long car journeys are the perfect time to bring them out and pass them on to another generation.

Pass-it-on stories. Someone starts up a story (e.g. “Once upon a time, there was a pirate called Bob who lived on a ship with a cockatoo named Billy”). After a few sentences, the story is passed on to the next player, who continues it as they see fit and passes it on again.

Verbal word games. There’s oodles out there and you don’t have to have a PhD in English Literature to play them.